The Musings of a Consulting Detective
by MrsMCrieff
Summary: A one-shot based on Sherlock's thoughts regarding his changing feelings for his pathologist. Sherlolly.


**So, this is a bit of a strange one shot based on the thoughts of Sherlock regarding Molly. I hope you enjoy it.**

 **The Musings of a Consulting Detective**

Sherlock had never really paid much attention to Molly Hooper, not really, not on a personal level.

Any consideration of her was from a work perspective. Soon after their first meeting he'd quickly assessed that although she was still relatively young in her profession she had thoroughness and an eye for detail that was second to none. He'd never before worked with a pathologist who understood what he needed and looked for in a cadaver.

She would often text him to let him know about an unusual death that had come in, not necessarily suspicious deaths, after all he got wind of those from Lestrade. No the odd deaths, the freak accidents, the exception to the rules, all the strange events that she knew would pique his interest.

He was aware that she was using these events as some sort of mating ritual, appealing to him through their shared interests but she was easy enough to brush off. A misunderstanding over coffee here, pretending not to hear, or just plain ignoring her. It didn't matter to him, nothing about her really mattered behind her assistance with his work.

Except she did matter. The first time he'd picked up on it was when she'd introduced him to her latest boyfriend in the lab. He'd been irritated at her forcing her personal life on him in what he had assumed was a place of work. He'd quickly picked up on all the hidden gay signals and told himself that telling her was a kindness. He'd stuck with that excuse in his head even after John had told him it wasn't.

It was only later when he'd realised Jim was actually Moriarty that he'd thought back to that moment and wondered why he hadn't picked up on those signs; the signs of a psychopath, earlier. He'd rolled it round and round in his mind before he'd come to the strange conclusion that he'd concentrated more on Molly and the fact that she had a life outside of him, more than he'd concentrated on the boyfriend.

He frowned in frustration deciding that it wasn't good enough. He couldn't afford for a woman to become a distraction like that.

Which was ironic that he made that decision just before his head was totally turned by The Woman. She just confirmed to him in his own mind that sex, relationships, love were all weaknesses. Weaknesses that he should purge from his life, along with one Molly Hooper.

Except he couldn't completely purge her, he needed her. She was still the best pathologist in London. Not to mention the fact that she gave him body parts when no one else would. They would just look at him with that look that said they thought he was a freak, some kind of fetishist. But Molly, Molly understood his need to experiment, to replicate injuries, bruising, cuts, burns in the human body. The drive for information, knowledge. If that made him a freak he was happy to accept the title.

Of course John was under the deluded impression that his relationship with Irene had turned sexual. Sherlock had to be honest and admit that the thought had crossed his mind more than once. She was a confident, intelligent and beautiful woman. He would have had to have been made of stone to not react in some way to her sexuality. But strangely enough he'd been more moved and affected by the angry outburst from Molly after he'd humiliated her at the Christmas party.

Hearing her words, her remonstrations with him had hurt him more than he'd thought they would. His apology to her had been one of the most honest interactions he'd ever had with her. It hadn't just surprised the rest of the room it had surprised him, to the extent he'd had to leave the room, using the phone as an excuse.

He'd sat on the edge of his bed, gripping the covers a frown creasing his face, _what the hell was that?_ A small voice told him, that was emotion, so much more dangerous to him that all of Irene's sexual attraction.

He avoided Molly for a while after that. If he needed information about a body or a case he used email or texts to communicate with her. He neither cared nor wondered if she noticed.

It was only when his world started to fall apart that he found himself back in her morgue, her lab. Once again she managed to surprise him, to elicit a response from him that wasn't purely cold and logical. She saw him in a way that others didn't, as a man rather than a machine. She didn't have any expectations of him, not now. She seemed to have accepted that they were just friends and if Sherlock had had more time he would have wondered why that made him feel slightly uneasy. But he didn't have time. Time, for him, was running out.

It was only Molly and Mycroft who kept him alive and even then it hadn't been a foregone conclusion. When he'd approached Molly that night as she was leaving the morgue, he'd known absolutely that she would help him but he hadn't understood til he said the words how much he'd grown to rely on her, to trust her completely with his own survival.

She hadn't let him down. Not that he would have been alive to realise it if she had.

She'd offered to let him stay at her flat afterwards, to hide him, to protect him but he'd turned her down immediately. He had no desire to be confined in close quarters with her. He was starting to see that that could be more dangerous to him that anything Moriarty could throw at him.

Instead he'd followed his brother's plan to the letter. He'd been out of the country within 24 hours, new look, new identity, new focus.

He hadn't dared to look back, to let himself indulge in memories of John, of Baker St., of Molly. No, he had a job to do and so he did it. His only contact with his old life was the occasional, and they were very occasional, communiques with his brother.

It had been a delicious shock to his system then to be back in London, back in his own clothes, his own skin. He'd greeted each of his friends in turn and acknowledged to himself that he felt happy and relieved to be back. He couldn't help but be surprised to see that they had gone on without him, making lives and relationships for themselves.

John had picked someone so perfectly right for himself that Sherlock couldn't help but be won over by her. He made friends so infrequently that the speed of their friendship had startled him.

He was less enamoured of Molly's choice however. He'd hoped, at first that she had finally found a man to give her what he knew he couldn't, but that had been before he'd actually met him. It didn't take a consulting detective to see that Tom was wrong for Molly, after all Lestrade, Mrs Hudson and John had all seen it too. The only person who apparently hadn't was Molly herself.

Still, even then he hadn't really considered Molly being anything more to him. She had finally become more than just his pathologist, she was now his friend, and on that basis they moved forward. He spent more time in the lab or the morgue, conducting his experiments whilst she worked; her hands deftly slicing up the cadavers that came through her place of work. It was comfortable and gave him the human interaction that he missed now that John had moved out to be with Mary.

Every so often he would catch Molly staring at him a beat too long or he would hear her breath hitch if he leant too close to her as he looked at a body but he tried to ignore it. He knew in the past he would have used it against her, used it to manipulate her but he owed her too much to do that now. So, instead he pretended he hadn't seen, hadn't heard. In the same way he ignored his increasingly irritating reactions to her, the slight rise in his heartbeat when she walked past him, the twitch in his hand when she put her hand on the desk next to him.

It wasn't because she was engaged that he ignored it, it was because the work still came first. Emotions were just a left over from evolution. Sherlock still believed the human race would be better off without them. He saw how they destroyed people every day. A husband beating his wife, a father killing his child, brothers fighting, countries going to war over ideologies and power kicks. He just didn't see the positives of any of it.

He also saw the downside when he embroiled himself with Janine in order to gain access to Magnusson's office. There was nothing particularly wrong with Janine. Given differing circumstances they might even have become friends, of sorts. She gave as good as she got, had a hugely ambitious and competitive streak. She was no push over but he had felt nothing when he had kissed her other than a slight nagging thought that it should be someone else.

He did have to acknowledge that it had reminded him how good physical contact could be though his memories of sex were through a haze of drugs and/or alcohol as well as a decade of time. He had even experienced a few strange, disturbing dreams that had left him aching and frustrated trying to catch the tail end of them as he awoke; wanting to remember them so he could analyse where they had come from and what they might mean.

It was around this time that he'd realised that Molly had finally come to her senses and broken things off with 'meat dagger'. He'd known it for a while before he threw it in her face in a flare of drug fuelled anger.

His drug taking had been for a case, there was a reason. It had nothing to do with his boredom, his sense of aloneness and those strange elusive dreams. He had told himself that over and over again until those slaps from Molly had brought his life suddenly into sharp focus. Once again her anger waking him up to his own inadequacies. This time a kiss on the cheek would not be sufficient so instead he lashed out at her, his defensive mechanism taking advantage of his drugged mind and trying to hurt her rather than acknowledge the truth behind her disappointment in him.

As he weaned himself back off the drugs over the next couple of days he could feel a nagging, an itch at the back of his skull that had far more to do with his feelings than it did the drugs. When he closed his eyes he saw her anger. He would even flinch almost expecting to feel her hand whipping across his face again.

It wasn't enough to change who he was though. Just a growing acknowledgment that Molly was something more. More than just a bloody good pathologist, more than just a close friend. She hovered in no man's land in his head. She couldn't go back to the space he'd allowed her before but he couldn't let her move forward into his heart, that was too much, a step he couldn't make. He was married to his work. The work was all that mattered; beating Magnusson was all that mattered.

But then one small, brief moment turned his life upside down. He was lucky it didn't end it, it would have if it hadn't been for Molly saving his life for a second time even if she didn't even know it.

The bullet sliding into his body seemed to happen in slow motion. His mind acknowledged it even before the nerves in his chest reacted, sending their messages of pain into his neural network.

Part of him wanted to concentrate on Mary, how could he have missed Mary! But the greater part of him knew he had to concentrate on just staying alive, accessing every resource he had available to him in his mind palace. All with one aim; live!

He didn't have time or energy to push his emotions aside. So when his mind palace took the form of Molly he just accepted it, couldn't and didn't fight it. He just accepted in what could potentially be his final moments that she would be the one he would want to see. She would be his final sight and his only regret.

As he clawed his way back to life, dragging himself up the stairs in a bid to save John Watson, his heart stayed beating for Molly.

SHSHSHSHSHSHSHSH

His recovery from that bullet wound was longer and harder than he'd thought possible, undoubtedly not helped by his leaving hospital too early in a bid to neutralise Mary Morstan. She had shot him to keep John from finding out about her so the only way to counteract that had been for John to find out who he was married too.

On the up side it had meant that John was back in Baker St. and therefore on hand to minister to Sherlock's every need as he recovered. But when he wasn't tending to Sherlock he looked sad and Sherlock had to acknowledge that John was better when he was with Mary than without, he was happier, his mind was clearer. Was it feasible that it could be the same for Sherlock? Could love offer any benefits?

He dwelt on these thoughts when he wasn't thinking about Magnusson. He wondered whether he should consider exploring his feelings as and when the newspaper magnate's threat was neutralised. The more he thought about it the more the images became like a drug to him, fuelling his imagination.

He wondered at what point he acknowledge in his mind that he was thinking of Molly with these musings. Had he ever actually realised the moment he had feelings beyond friendship for her? If he had he couldn't remember it. The question in his mind seemed to have become _when_ rather than _if._ It seemed somewhat ironic that just as he had come to terms with starting a relationship his ability to was taken away.

It had been an active decision on his part, he couldn't deny that he knew he was destroying his chances of a life the moment he put that bullet through Magnusson's skull. The honest truth was that he hadn't been able to come up with an alternative. There was no way that any of them, including Mycroft, could walk free from that house without Magnusson being neutralised. The price was his own freedom and he'd accepted that as he'd pulled the trigger but it didn't stop the gaping hole appearing where once his heart had resided.

He'd finally allowed his emotions out as the plane had left England the ground and runway dwindling to nothing as they rose into the air. He'd had to blink away the tears; focusing instead on John and Mary being free, his promise to be there for them paid in full. He hadn't been able to face saying goodbye to Molly though. She had become his one regret.

The phone call from Mycroft broke through his reverie offering him a reprieve and a second chance. He knew he had work to do to track down the originator of the video but in all honesty for the first time in his life a case was secondary to his own personal desires. He could not, would not go another night without her.

She'd been surprised by his appearance in her morgue. She'd known he was in trouble even though she hadn't known the extent of it. She was even more surprised by his actions. He hadn't trusted himself to say the right thing, he had always had a tendency to hurt people with his words even when he didn't mean to. Instead he'd walked slowly towards her watching the expression change on her face from surprise to confusion to a hopeful realisation.

That first kiss there in the place they'd first met so many years earlier was a culmination of all their interactions, every action they'd ever taken, it had all led to this and it was perfect. He wondered how he had never seen it before. She wasn't just a part of his life she was his whole life, without her nothing would ever be worthwhile again.

Her soft lips moving against his, her small hands sliding under his jacket, holding him closer, this was what he needed and his life would forever be the richer for it.

 **And there we have it. Bit of a departure from my normal style. I just sat down and wrote and this was what came out. Please let me know what you thought. My normal style will be resumed with a new story on Sunday.**


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